Twisted Farie Tales Remystiltskin
by Frogboy Lives
Summary: Once upon a time an insane author decided to write some childrens stories... then they cast the Xmen. Enjoy


Remystiltskin 

~Disclaimer- I do not own the X-Men, or Rumplestiltskin. Both are victims of my deranged imagination

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young woman named Rogue, Rogue's mother Mystique, who incidentally was a shape-shifting mutant terrorist, was very proud of her daughter and told many stories about her beauty and many skills.

Eventually one of the stories, albeit in a much-distorted form, that the terrorist Mystique's daughter could spin straw into gold and was unbelievably gorgeous to boot, reached the ears of the mutant lord Magnus. Deciding that a beautiful woman, who could keep him in money using dry grass, was just the kind of follower Magnus needed to help him crush the lowly humans, Magnus set off for Mystique's headquarters, without checking the veracity of the story.

Unfortunately for Magnus (or Rogue depending on how you look at it), the story was only half true, for while Rogue was beautiful and had many skills, including bomb-making, hacking into supposedly secure government databases and several forms of martial arts, as well as possessing several mutant powers, the ability to spin straw into gold was not in her repertoire. In fact Rogue couldn't spin full stop. What Magnus was unaware of was that the story had grown from a casual comment by Mystique that Rogue was such an inept spinner that she was more likely to spin straw into gold than wool into yarn.

Thus it was something of a shock that Magnus should show up at Mystique's headquarters, a rather nice thatched cottage in the south.

"Mystique, holding out on us all these years, who would have thought?"

"Magnus, what are you talking about?" Mystique's bemused reply to Magnus's jovial comment only made his grin wider.

"Come on Mystique, there's no use trying. The cat's well and truly out of the bag now."

"Cat? Bag? Magnus have you been fighting Xavier again?" That the would-be supreme leader had annoyed the powerful telepath so much that he'd fried Magnus's mind was the only explanation Mystique could think of for his current behaviour.

"Now, now Mystique, everybody knows about your daughter and how you've been financing this operation."

Abruptly Mystique stiffened and her voice became dangerously low, "Magnus, I don't know what you're on, but if you're suggesting…" 

Magnus responded to this by throwing his head back and laughing.

"Really Mystique, did you really think you could keep your daughters powers secret forever?"

"Magnus the fact that Rogue took Ms. Marvel's powers has nothing to do with you and if…"

"Not that Mystique, I'm talking about her ability to spin straw into gold."

"WHAT!?!" Mystique's astonished exclamation could be heard from several miles away, where it caused several hens to go off laying. "Magnus, Rogue has never, and most likely will never, spin anything, let alone straw into gold."

At this point Magnus was saved from Mystique pulling a weapon on him by Rogue, coming home from buying military surplus at the market to find her mother talking to a white haired stranger, who in resplendent garments of red and purple cut a imposing, if vaguely absurd, figure. 

"Momma, who's yoah guest?"

"Rogue this is Magnus, also known as Magneto, master of magnetism. Magnus, Rogue." At this point, Mystique started to surreptitiously push Rogue towards the house. However Magnus grabbed one gloved hand and kissed it in his most courtly evil-mutant-lord manner.  

"Why Mystique, I never suspected you had such a charming daughter." Of course Magnus was lying through his teeth, because even he would find the idea of hearing a story about a beautiful girl spinning straw into gold and believing the part about the gold and not the girl more than a touch abnormal. 

"Why, thank ya sugah." The fact that Rogue was indeed quite attractive with emerald eyes, and long auburn hair which had a white stripe through it, did not do Mystique's case for Rogue's lack of spinning ability much good.  All it did was convince Magnus further that the rumour was truth.

"No need to thank me for the truth my dear. Now you both know that our people have been oppressed by the human scum for many years and it has long been my dream to lead our people to freedom…" Magnus continued in this vein for some time, waxing lyrical in his recounting of his plans for world domination. If he had been a more interesting public speaker he would no doubt have had his audience wrapped around his little finger, as it was by the time his pontificating drew to a close fully half an hour later they had been tuning him out for quite a while. "Anyway Mystique, I feel that your daughter's skill could be useful to my cause in days to come. As such I extend an offer to join me."

"Huh…" Waking from her most refreshing nap in ages it took a moment for Mystique to catch up. "Magnus, she is not joining you!"

"Why not?"

"Because you're totally and utterly wrong."

"About what?"

"Are you being like this deliberately? Her powers of course."

"Mystique, why are you continuing this charade?" As you can probably tell not much dissuaded Magnus when he was like this. 

"Uh, excuse me. Mistah Magnus, but Mystique's right, Ah cain't spin and mah powers ain't got anything ta do with spinning. Sorry sugah." 

"My dear it is I who am sorry." Strangely enough he didn't look it, in fact he looked rather annoyed. Turning around he called out. "Oh, Victor, plan B." 

"Victor? Magnus if you brought Creed here I'll-" At Magnus's gesture the tall blond man creeping around behind the house hit Mystique on the back of the head, knocking her out and giving her a rather nasty concussion. 

"Now my dear, are you going to come along quietly now, or does Victor here need to persuade you." 

"Ah'm coming, Ah'm coming." Reluctantly she followed Magnus "But Ah cain't spin straw into gold."

````````````````````

Once Magnus had taken Rogue back to his castle, he promptly took her to a fair sized room, which was filled with straw and had a spinning wheel in the centre. Pushing Rogue into the room he locked the door on her.

"Let me out. Ah keep telling ya Ah cain't spin straw into gold." 

"Now my dear, spin the straw into gold and we'll let you out tomorrow morning. But if you leave one speck of chaff unspun, I'll have your pretty little head."

"Ah'll give ya mah pretty little head!" Bashing her fist against the door, Rogue was dismayed to find it didn't even mark the door. Her superhuman strength was gone. "What did ya do to mah powers?"

"Except for the area immediately around the spinning wheel the whole room is affected by an immense dampening field. You're also wearing a tracker bracelet so even if you did get out of that room, you wouldn't get far." With that Magnus went off, leaving Rogue alone to try and figure a way out of this mess.

Several hours later as the sun set, Rouge had tried everything she could think of. The hole in the dampening field was spherical, so when she tried flying straight up she had become stuck in midair, half in the dampening field, half out. Trying to remove the tracker bracelet hadn't worked out either, as it was both made of adamantium and electrified, it hadn't broken and shocked her painfully every time she touched it. Finally Rogue tried to spin the straw, on the off chance something might happen, but the spinning wheel had only broken in her uncoordinated, over-strong hands.

As she was getting more and more depressed as time went by, Rogue decided to have a good cry and get it out of her system. This meant that she didn't see the thief lowering himself from the air vent until he was well inside the room.

"Merde! We've been duped, mon ami." The heavily accented exclamation from the dangling thief, who was more than a touch surprised at the contents of the room, startled Rogue out of her funk. Walking over to the cursing thief, she grabbed hold of his shoulder and spun him around. She found herself looking into a pair of red-on-black eyes set in a good-looking, if upside-down, face framed with short, russet-brown hair. 

"Sugah, if you're looking for the ladies washroom, it's down the hall." Immediately, Rogue's comment got the expected response as the young man coloured and started spluttering.

"Why d' y' say somethin' like dat? Gambit's no peepin' Tom, Gambit's a thief." 

"Well sugah, Ah hope ya have a good explanation for coming in here. It's not like there's all that much ta steal. Unless ya like straw of course."

"De plan's for dis place, say dis room is one o' Magnus's treasure rooms. But dere's no gold or nothin' in here. Unless o' course y' are de treasure."

"You're definitely a charmer, Gambit is it?" The subject of her query nodded an affirmative as he untangled his harness and righted himself. "But can ya get this off."

"Gambit can only do his best chere. But would y' mind tellin' 'im why Magnus would fill a treasure room wit' straw."

````````````````````

"So ya see, that's why Ah would prefer not ta be here at sunrise." Half an hour, several scorched fingers and a brief but comprehensive lesson in French obscenities later, the only thing that Gambit had had any success with was with an explanation of why Rogue was in a treasure room full of straw. In an attempt to more fully concentrate on the job at hand, he had even dropped his distracting habit of referring to himself in the third person. 

"Well, dis bracelet is not going to come of with dese tools, if I had my special tools, den it would be an entirely different story. But we aint exactly got time t' go get dem cherie." Audibly exhaling his frustration, Gambit started pacing. "Dat Magnus, he is crazy. Lockin' a beautiful woman in a room full o' straw 'n' threaten' t' kill her if she don't turn it t' gold? Dat is not de work o' a man who's all right in de head. I mean nobody can change straw t' gold…" Abruptly he stopped, causing Rogue who was also pacing to crash into him, as they were in the non-dampened area of the room the impact caused Gambit to go flying. Luckily he landed on one of the many piles of straw and no harm was done. A low chuckle emanated from the ceiling and a demonic visaged youth, covered with short indigo fur, lowered him-self from the vent with the aid of a pronged tail. 

"Well he's fallen for women before, but never so spectacularly." He commented wryly, earning himself a glare from the straw-covered Gambit.

"Very funny elf. Now help me up." 

"Such anger, and you haven't even introduced me to the lady. I am deeply hurt." The merriment in the youth's lambent yellow eyes belied the forlorn expression on his face.

"Chere, dis is Kurt, also called Nightcrawler."

"His partner. Of course that means I get stuck up in air-ducts while he chats up women."

"Fuzzy, dis is Rogue." Gambit growled "We are goin' t' get her out o' here. But first we are goin' t' make Magnus t'ink dat she spun de straw t' gold."

"Why do I have the feeling I am going to be bamfing a lot?"

"Y' psychic? Now y' go and get de gold while Gambit disposes of de straw."

BAMF!! Kurt disappeared in a burst of sulphur and brimstone.

"Sugah, if Kurt can teleport ta wherever and get the gold that way, why are ya breaking in through the air-ducts?"

"De challenge."

"Right."

Gambit's plan was quite simple, while Nightcrawler was off getting the gold, Rogue and Gambit heaped the straw into the non-dampened area of the room, once there he simply used his power of unlocking the kinetic energy of the straw to make it explode. Of course, there were a couple of hitches, such as when the glowing red straw somehow set fire to the straw outside the dampening field. But otherwise the switch went off as planned, and the two thieves left as the sun broke the horizon, leaving Rogue with a promise to return the next night and a concealed communicator in case she ran into difficulties. Which, of course, she did.

````````````````````

"Ya want us ta WHAT!?!" Rogue's surprised yell surpassed Mystique's of the previous day causing not only the chickens, but also the rest of the castle's poultry, to stop laying.

"To get married. It's perfect, with your powers and my brains, we'll be envy of all the other kingdoms."

Although temped to respond to _that_ with 'what brains?', Rogue decided to try and salvage the rapidly deteriorating situation. "But, we cain't."

"Why not?"

"Uh…because of the imp." Realizing how that sounded, Rogue spent a second mentally hitting her head against the wall, before hastily constructing a semi-believable tale.

"The imp?" 

"Ya see, Ah couldn't spin the straw ta gold, but I didn't want mah head chopped off, so I made a deal with this imp that appeared."

"And what was this deal?"

Warming to her material Rogue continued, "Well, he taught me ta spin the gold, and in return Ah kinda have ta marry him."

Magnus was not happy. "WHAT!! I'll find this imp and I'll…what was his name."

"He didn't say, apparently having his name gives ya power over him." Rogue finished somewhat lamely.

"Fine. I'll make a proclamation, whoever brings me the name of this imp by tomorrow afternoon, can have anything in my lands as a reward. Then we'll get married. No imp will spoil my wedding."

Rogue's covert message to Gambit and Nightcrawler later that day was accompanied by the sound of someone rhythmically bashing their head against a wall.

````````````````````

The next afternoon, while the kind of day most brides would sell their soul for, dragged on interminably for Rogue as person after person bearing a list of ridiculous names came forth and tried to put a name to her fictitious imp. Finally a man, raggedly dressed and bizarrely accented, came to the front of the line.

"Sir, I was in de ole woods, when I hear dis odd chantin', so I go t' de clearing and I see dis imp, who be singin' dis song dat went like dis… 

"First I carve, then I bake, 

 And tomorrow a bride I take, 

'Coz Magnus's helmet don't keep his brains in, 

He'll never guess my name is REMYSTILTSKIN!"

 Like an actor waiting for a cue, as soon as the man said 'Remystiltskin' a blue, demonic imp with glowing eyes, appeared before the crowd in a puff of smoke, shrieking horribly, and started grovelling.

"NOOOOOO! Who guessed? Mercy, please, I was lonely. My mother didn't hug as a child. I just wanted a friend." While Kurt, for it was he, put on a display of ham acting, the like of which had not been seen in the palace since Magnus's last family reunion, he crawled forward until he was sobbing at Rogue's feet (and also had quite a firm grasp of her skirt).

"Pitiful." Magnus sniffed, before turning to the ragged man, who was, for those playing at home, Gambit. "Well, my good mutant, what do you wish as you're your reward? Land? Money?"

"A kiss." Gambit replied, and seeing the perturbed look on Magnus's face added. "From de lady. An' t' give y' a token of my esteem." 

"A small enough thing." Magnus replied, totally oblivious to any possible objection on Rogue's part.  

"_Merci_." Gambit replied, then handed Magnus a playing card, before preparing to engage with Rogue in a passionate embrace. However, just then Magnus, who had been examining the glowing fuchsia card, tapped it, causing it explode and signalling Nightcrawler, who bamfed them all back to their hideout.

Sadly the moment was lost, but their carefully plotted escape plan had been a complete success. Rogue, however, had one final question. "How the heck, did y'all come up with a ridiculous name like Remystiltskin?" 

The pair of thieves shifted uncomfortably and looked at each other before answering.

"Dere's a reason, I call myself Gambit." Remystiltskin answered.

THE END

~~~


End file.
